1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally related to the monitoring and control of electronic information in a communication system. More particularly, the present invention is related to the monitoring and control of electronic information, such as voice, video, and data, that is provided from a wide area network (WAN) to one or more customer premises equipment (CPE) devices via a residential gateway.
2. Background
As used herein, the term “residential gateway” refers to an interface between a wide area network (WAN) and one or more local end user devices, also referred to as customer premises equipment (CPE) devices. Residential gateways operate as functional bridges between the external network and the CPE devices, receiving application-agnostic data from the external network, separating the data into various types, optionally reformatting it for a particular application, and distributing the data via one or more in-premises networks to one or more CPE devices. Each CPE device may consume the data in its raw format or perform additional transformations on the data prior to use. Data that is distributed by the gateway may include, but is not limited to, voice, video, and/or computer data.
Conventional residential gateway devices provide end users with only limited data monitoring and control functions. For example, conventional residential gateways permit some filtering of computer data for security and network management purposes, such as providing firewall and DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) services. These functions of the residential gateway are generally configured by the end user via a Web interface, which provides some visibility into the traditional computer data functions of the gateway device, as well as SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) network monitoring and control functions. In general, however, apart from the provisioning and control of computer data network services, no other function exists within these devices to control or monitor other application data types, such as voice or video.
Some conventional residential gateways include interfaces that convert voice and video data received from the WAN from an Internet Protocol (IP) format into a native format used by a CPE device, such as a telephone or television. Control of these interfaces may be provided via provisioning services from the network or from craft interfaces into the residential gateway, but in general this control is limited to “on/off” type functionality, such as mapping IP addresses to telephone numbers, or providing a video cutoff relay.
Various methods are known for monitoring and/or controlling application data for law enforcement and parental monitoring purposes. These methods are typically implemented as data logs and filters for Web content on computers, recording equipment for phones (generally only used by law enforcement agencies), or “V-chip” type technology for televisions. These implementations all either prevent data from reaching an end user and/or provide “after the fact” records of the data that was exchanged. No mechanism is provided for real-time monitoring or control of the data flows, with the possible exception of telephony services in a traditional circuit-switched environment using conventional “phone tap” equipment.
What is needed then is a system, method and computer program product that provides for real-time control and/or monitoring of data appearing on one or more CPE interfaces of a residential gateway, where the data includes voice, video and/or computer data. The desired system, method and computer program product should allow an end user to monitor, mix, and control data of various types, including voice, video and/or computer data, in real time.